When I woke up the next morning, I felt tired. Not as tired as I would after spending a night in the Stone Corridor, but my mind felt like it hadn’t rested at all. My headache had eased a bit, so it was just a mild annoyance. As a Foundation Establishment cultivator, this wasn’t as big of an issue for me, but it still sucked. At least my body felt fine. Thank the ancestors for body cultivation.
I looked around. High Inquisitor Corvus, Inquisitor Lewin, and Grand Priest Darius stood around me in a ragged circle. From the way they looked, I wasn’t the only one that had a rough night. Grand Priest Darius looked the worst. His face was haggard, and his eyes had bags under them. Inquisitor Lewin drooped, and it felt like he would drop at any moment. The only one who seemed fine was High Inquisitor Corvus. Given that he was at, or at least near, Grandfather Gabe’s level of power, this didn’t surprise me.
Father and Mother stood nearby. They looked a bit better than Grand Priest Darius and Inquisitor Lewin, thanks to their cultivation, but not by much. After all, the both of them were only in the Energy Condensation stage. While they were better off than most wizards and mortals, it wasn’t by much at this point.
I sat up.
“Welcome back, Lord Gabriel,” Grand Priest Darius said, giving me a tired smile. “I’m glad to see that you’re still with us. I’ll admit, I didn’t expect you to last all night long. I thought that we would have had to erase the mark a few hours in. Instead, you gave us enough time to study the mark in its entirety. Your mental fortitude is astounding, especially for someone your age.”
I studied him for a moment. Did he not know that I was a cultivator? That was the entire reason why High Inquisitor Corvus thought I would do better against the mental demons than the other heirs.
“Does he know?” I asked, giving the high inquisitor a questioning look.
“That you’re a cultivator?” High Inquisitor Corvus said. “Yes, he does. I informed him last night.”
Grand Priest Darius chuckled.
“Yes, but that alone doesn’t mean he would have fared better against mental spirits and demons than the other heirs,” he said. “Not every cultivator has experience dealing with inner demons. It seems Lord Gabriel here is an astounding young man.”
That was one way to put it, sure.
“As expected from the Chosen of Lord Tempest,” High Inquisitor Corvus said.
I sighed. Yep. He figured it out all right.
“What?” Inquisitor Lewin asked. He had been falling asleep on his feet, but the high inquisitor’s statement jolted him awake. “This vul-…” He paused and took a deep breath. “Lord Gabriel is Lord Tempest’s Chosen? You can’t be serious.”
“Why do you think I was so willing to help with this endeavor, Inquisitor Lewin?” Grand Priest Darius asked. “If not for my lord’s Chosen?”
Despite the mask covering his face, I could almost see Inquisitor Lewin’s jaw dropping.
“I would appreciate it if you kept this fact to yourselves,” I said, glaring at High Inquisitor Corvus, the blabbermouth. “Lord Tempest has enemies, and I don’t want to get involved with church politics just yet.”
“You have my word,” High Inquisitor Corvus said, before looking at his aide.
After some hesitation, Inquisitor Lewin nodded.
“Now then-…” Grand Priest Darius started to say, but a yawn interrupted him. “Goodness. I apologize for that. It has been a long night.”
“Yes, it has,” High Inquisitor Corvus said. “I hate to impose further, but do you have any spare rooms for us? While I’m fine, my compatriots are in no condition to travel back to the Grand Temple.”
Father nodded.
“We anticipated something like this,” he said in a tired voice. “We had the servants prepare rooms for the three of you. Feel free to enjoy our hospitality for as long as you need.”
“Thank you, Lord Sturm. Your kindness will not be forgotten.”
Father summoned Kurt Traylor, our butler, and asked him to escort our guests to their rooms. Kurt bowed, before following Father’s orders. Our guests filed out, leaving me alone with my parents. Mother rushed towards me. From the look on her face, she would have done so earlier but held back because of the others.
“Gabriel,” Mother said, checking me over. “How do you feel? Did anything happen to you while you slept? Are you injured in any way?” She looked at my dantian. “Did something happen to him, Aurora?”
My familiar poked her head out of my chest.
“Everything is fine, Lady Sturm,” she said. “Nothing happened to Gabriel.”
Aurora retreated back into my body.
“I told you that I could handle a few measly mental demons,” I said, a little irked that Mother hadn’t given me a chance to respond before asking Aurora. “You should have more confidence in me.”
Mother pressed her forehead against mine and closed her eyes.
“I know I should,” she said. “But after what happened on the trip here, can you blame me for worrying?” She opened her eyes. “I almost lost you three times now. First, there was your duel with Lady Annabelle. Second, there was the battle with the Black Wolf Gang. And now we have to deal with Dark wizards.”
Father put a hand on her shoulder.
“Gabriel is fine,” he said. “Regardless of what happened in the past, he is fine now. Have a little faith in our boy.”
Mother hesitated, before nodding.
“Now then,” Father continued. “I think it’s best if we all get some rest. We’ve been up all night, and none of us are in our right minds at the moment.”
I wish I could. My mind was tired, but my body was refreshed. Going to bed now, after I had just woken up, wouldn’t do me any good. I would just lie there, staring at the ceiling. Since that was the case, I might as well run some errands while the others slept. I didn’t say that out loud, however. My parents might worry that something would happen to me, Mother in particular.
While my parents headed off to their rooms to sleep, I headed to mine to get ready for the day. While I changed, Aurora flew out of my dantian.
“Did Forgotten Memory and the others leave?” I asked.
I decided to go with a more casual outfit, since I didn’t plan on doing anything too important while I was out. Casual by House standards that was. It still looked pretty expensive and formal compared to what non-House scions wore.
“Yes, they left,” my familiar said. “I made sure of it. One little bugger thought he could hide out and wait, but I ate him.”
I snorted.
After we finished our discussion, Forgotten Memory swore the soul oath. I almost giggled at the look on his face when he realized that it actually worked, but I managed to keep control of myself. Realizing that he in fact had a soul must have been a big shock to him.
When that wore off, Forgotten Memory went to work fulfilling his end of the bargain. He and Aurora went to dig up the memory fragments of the Dark wizard who cursed me, while I continued to deal with the mental demons who kept coming after me. While a few gave me a little trouble, they were pretty easy to handle overall. When Aurora and Forgotten Memory returned, they handed me the memory fragments. Since dreams were all about symbolism and metaphors, the fragments looked like mirror shards.
Forgotten Memory then told me about the mark, which wasn’t much. As he mentioned before, it was designed to lure in mental spirits and demons into my mind, before trapping them in there. The only way to escape was to devour my mind. However, it only worked on certain kinds of mental spirits and demons.
Not all mental spirits were hostile and malicious. They ran the gamut of human emotion and experience. This included positive ones such as joy, love, laughter, and so on. The mark had no effect on them. It only attracted the negative ones.
Forgotten Memory also confirmed my suspicions. It turned out that a Dark wizard, likely the same one who cursed me, had trapped a bunch of mental demons and unleashed them on those who were marked. This annoyed me. Most wizards couldn’t even sense mental demons, let alone trap them, but apparently Dark wizards could. Dark magic was such bullshit.
While Forgotten Memory hadn’t seen the Dark wizard who trapped him and his kin, he had sensed their aura. He shared this with me. If I ever met that Dark wizard face to face, I would recognize them. Once I could use my divine sense again that was.
After telling us everything he knew, Forgotten Memory settled in and kept the rest of his kin off my back. In the meantime, Aurora watched over me as I studied the memory fragments in order to remember what I had forgotten. It wasn’t much. As Forgotten Memory said, the Dark wizard who cursed me had been very thorough.
The fragments didn’t reveal much. I saw a room with a window. Based on the view outside, it looked like it was somewhere in the Solarian Imperial Academy’s main building. I felt pain as something cold and slimy burrowed into my mind. A sweet, floral scent teased my nostrils. I think it was honeysuckle, though I wasn’t sure. I heard a woman’s voice, though it was garbled and unintelligible. The only thing I could make out were the words “greater purpose”.
And that was it. That was all I could remember from the memory fragments. Still, it was better than nothing.
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That was how we spent the rest of the night until Grand Priest Darius and the inquisitors erased the mark, which allowed Forgotten Memory and the others to escape my mind. My intuition told me that I would see the memory demon in the future. Only time would tell if that would be a good thing or not.
After I finished changing, and applied the alchemical concoction that hid my eyes’ true nature, I left my rooms and asked one of the servants about my disciples. They had gone to bed late last night, and most were still asleep. The only one awake at the moment was Leroy. Perfect. If I went out without any kind of escort, and my parents found out, it wouldn’t end well for me. I wanted to look for a present for Kaylee, not cause my parents any further worry. Besides, I had to keep up appearances.
Leroy was likely in the barracks. Since we were back at Sturm Manor, it wouldn’t be appropriate for him to stay in the main building. The barracks, situated near the rear of the property, was where we housed our retainers. It also contained all the other facilities they needed such as a training yard, a mess hall, a medical clinic, and so on.
A quick look out a window told me that it was dawn. Knowing Leroy, I guessed that he was training. If I could use my divine sense to find him right away, but that wasn’t an option at the moment. That meant I had to do this the old fashioned way.
I headed towards the barracks to find my bodyguard. While I could have sent a servant to do it for me, I wanted to stretch my legs. The barracks was a short walk away from the main building, past the rear gardens and hidden by a small copse of trees. The air felt cool and refreshing. Breathing it in lessened my headache further. Dew covered the grass and the flowers in the garden. A light mist swirled about. Despite how tired my mind felt, the sight of the rising sun lifted my spirits.
The barracks was a squat one-story wooden building that looked even shabbier and worn down than Sturm Manor’s main building. The training yard was located in front of the barracks. It reminded me of the one in the Icefall Adventurers Guild; a plot of dirt with training equipment.
That reminded me. I needed to reinstate my membership with the Adventurers Guild. I would have done so before we left the Icefall Region, but we were so busy that it slipped my mind. Not only that, but I needed to get reevaluated so I could increase my rank. While the situation with my family had worked out, I still wanted to go on adventures and earn as many resources on my own as I could.
I found Leroy training, as I expected. He wasn’t the only one either. Several of the House Sturm retainers were getting in their early morning training. Some were practicing martial arts, while others focused more on spellcasting. Magic circles were in place to help prevent any unfortunate accidents.
Leroy stood a little apart from the others, practicing the Energy Condensation forms for the Celestial Sword Style. A quick look told me that while he hadn’t mastered them yet, he wasn’t that far off. Hmm, I wondered if I should teach him the forms for the Foundation Establishment stage.
I shook my head. No. It was better to practice and perfect what he already knew instead of leaping ahead before he was ready.
The retainers stopped their training and stared at me in surprise as I walked towards Leroy. Not that I blamed them. This was the first time I had visited the barracks. Hell, it may have been the first time someone from House Sturm had visited the barracks in living memory. Our retainers came to us when we needed them, not the other way around.
“Young master?” Leroy asked, surprised. “What are you doing here?”
I didn’t know how long he had been training, but I guessed at least an hour since he was covered in sweat and grime.
“I’m heading out to get some errands done,” I said. “And I can’t exactly leave without my bodyguard now, can I?”
Well, I could, but I didn’t want to make Leroy’s life harder than I already had. That would just be mean.
“You could have sent a servant instead of coming here yourself,” Leroy said.
I shrugged.
“I know, but I wanted to stretch my legs.” I gestured to the rising sun. “Besides, it’s already a beautiful day out. If I had sent a servant, I would have missed out on this gorgeous view.”
Leroy followed my gesture and nodded with a small smile on his face.
“Very well, young master,” he said. “Give me a few minutes to clean up.”
I nodded. With that, he headed towards the barracks building. While waiting for him to come back, I looked around. The other retainers resumed their own training, but kept glancing at me. They looked uncomfortable. It didn’t take a genius to figure out why. While I was a scion of House Sturm, this was their domain and I was an intruder.
I decided to give them their space and walked around the barracks. To my surprise, I found out that the training yard extended beyond the front of the barracks. It wrapped around the building to the side. However, that wasn’t the biggest surprise.
This part of the training yard consisted of several thick poles sunken into the ground. Plum Blossom Poles. It was a training tool used on Spirit Earth, and mortal martial artists back on Earth. They were called that because they were usually set in a pattern resembling a plum tree’s blossom.
How they worked was that martial arts students would practice their forms atop the poles by stepping from the top of one pole to another. It helped improve footwork, balance, coordination, and so on.
Back on Spirit Earth, the Blossoming Lotus Sect had used them to train their newest recruits, those who hadn’t even formed their dantians yet. However, I never did since I was already a full-fledged cultivator by the time I joined the sect. Back then, I always thought that using Plum Blossom Poles was a waste of time. After all, why would a cultivator use such a mundane training method?
Thinking on it now, I realize how foolish I had been.
Fuck. I wish I had remembered these when training my disciples as well as Clan Sturm’s outer disciples. In fact, there were a few training tools and methods that could be useful but I hadn’t considered before. I made a note to send a message to Grandfather Gabe and ask his opinion about using them. If nothing else, I wanted him to install some Plum Blossom Poles in Sturm Hill.
Still, I was in luck since these Plum Blossom Poles were perfect for the training regimen I had in mind, the one where I honed my mundane sense. Or maybe not these ones in particular. I didn’t want to further intrude on the House Sturm retainers. Maybe I could install my own set somewhere else on the grounds. They wouldn’t be that difficult to make.
“Greetings, young master,” a voice called out to me.
I turned to find John Coombs walking towards me. He was the vice captain of the House Sturm retainers and Captain Jeffers’ second in command. She must have left him behind to hold down the fort while she was in the Icefall Region.
Vice Captain Coombs was a few years older than Leroy, with tanned skin and short dark hair. I had to admit, he was very handsome. Sharp cheekbones, a square jaw, amber eyes. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was popular among the ladies. Or the men, if they swung that way.
The vice captain studied me with a neutral mask on his face. Despite that, he couldn’t hide the faint hints of contempt in his amber eyes. They reminded me a little of a raptor’s eyes. Which I found funny since John was an Earth wizard, not an Air wizard.
The two of us never had much reason to interact before. He was merely the vice captain of our House’s retainers, not the captain, and I was a prick back then. Not only that, but he was only in the Second Circle; the upper end of the Second Circle, maybe even the peak, but still just the Second Circle.
Thinking about my attitude from back then made me cringe inside, especially since I had been just a Second Circle wizard myself.
“Greetings Vice-Captain Coombs,” I said.
“What brings you out here so early in the morning, young master?” he asked, stopping a few feet away.
“I’m heading out today to get some errands done,” I said. “And since Leroy is my bodyguard, I can’t leave without him. Father’s orders.”
Father never explicitly told me that I needed to take Leroy with me when I went out, but if I went out on my own and my parents found out, I would never hear the end of it. Mother worried too much about me as it was. No need for me to make it worse.
“You should have sent a servant to fetch him,” Vice Captain Coombs said. “There was no reason for you to come out here yourself.”
Interesting choice of words. Leroy said I could have sent a servant, while Vice Captain Coombs said I should have.
“Yes, I could have,” I said, putting slight emphasis on the word ‘could’. “But after spending the past few days cooped up inside an airship cabin, I needed to get some exercise in.”
As we talked, I noticed a small crowd of House Sturm retainers peaking around the corner to the barracks. Great. Just what we needed. An audience.
Vice Captain Coombs' eyes narrowed somewhat at my words, and he opened his mouth to speak, but I beat him to the punch.
“What are these?” I asked, nodding to the Plum Blossom Poles. “Are they some kind of training equipment?”
The sudden change in topic caught the vice captain off guard, and it took him a moment to respond.
“From what I know, they’re for some kind of training method from the Otherworld,” Vice Captain Coombs explained. “One of the previous captains of the House Sturm retainers heard about this training method, and he decided to give it a try. The House Sturm retainers tried it for a while, but it fell out of use after a decade or so.”
Ah, so that’s what happened. Interesting. I studied the poles. The captain who had them installed must have learned all he could about Plum Blossom Poles, since the ones here were laid out in the correct pattern. Considering he must have learned about them second-hand, I was impressed.
“If they fell out of use,” I said. “Why are they still here?”
Vice Captain Coombs shrugged.
“We never felt the need to remove them,” he said. “Every once in a while, a new recruit gives them a try but stops after falling a few times.”
I saw why. The tops of the Plum Blossom Poles were several feet off the ground. Falling from that height could result in serious injury, including broken bones. At least, for wizards and regular mortals.
It was also the perfect chance to deal with Vice Captain Coombs’ disrespect without embarrassing the man. While subtle, it would fester if I didn’t do something about it.
“Now then, young master,” the vice captain said. “If you would-…”
Before he even finished speaking, I ran up and jumped atop the nearest Plum Blossom Pole. Vice Captain Coombs tried to stop me, but failed.
“Young master! What are you doing? Get down from there before you hurt yourself!”
I ignored him and drew Sky’s Dream. I never went anywhere without it, even within the confines of my own home. Before Vice Captain Coombs, or any of the other House Sturm retainers, could do something foolish like try and stop me, I started going through the forms of the Celestial Sword Style. Instead of the forms for the Energy Condensation stage, I went through the ones for the Foundation Establishment stage. At first I went slow, since my body still hadn’t fully recovered, but as I warmed up I went faster and faster.
While moving through the forms atop the Plum Blossom Poles, I noted several minute flaws in my technique, though only someone at my level would have been able to notice them. I made adjustments and smoothed out those flaws. My cultivation base increased a tiny bit. Ha. My past self had been a fool. Even using the most mundane training methods could lead to improvements, if one had the right mindset.
A part of me wished to use Lotus Blade Dance and go through the forms of the Celestial Lotus Sword Dance technique, but I refrained. We were supposed to keep cultivation a secret. Going through the forms of the Celestial Sword Style was blatant enough. Using martial techniques would make it obvious to anyone that there was something strange going on with me.
Not only that, but I had spent the entire night dealing with mental spirits and demons. I was in no state to control the blades of sword mana at the moment. Hell, it was probably best to avoid straining my mind even further until it healed all the way. This also meant no flying around on Sky’s Dream, which disappointed me.
After going through all the Foundation Establishment forms for the Celestial Sword Style three times, I stopped. I walked across the Plum Blossom Poles and hopped down. A small crowd of House Sturm retainers had gathered to watch my performance, staring at me with wide eyes, including Vice Captain Coombs. The ones who had been to Sturm Hill Hall with Father and Mother looked less surprised, since they already knew what I could do.
Hopefully this would be enough to change the House Sturm retainers’ opinion of me in general. It was a start, if nothing else.
Leroy stood among the crowd. From the expression on his face, it looked like he gained insights from my display. Crap. If he didn’t meditate soon, he might lose those insights. Well, looks like he wasn’t coming with me today. Still, I couldn’t leave the barracks without him. Perhaps I could leave him in my rooms and take another retainer with me. Or maybe I could take either Lorelei or Corie, or both.
“You have a good day, Vice Captain Coombs,” I said, passing by the man. “Come along, Leroy.”
My disciple nodded and followed me to the main building, while the other House Sturm retainers watched us go in complete silence.